Universal Design for Virtual Worlds

Agents for multidisciplinary design in virtual worlds

Agent models provide a generalised approach to the design of systems that autonomously monitor and affect an environment. Societies of agents which reason and communicate about an environment can achieve complex emergent behaviour to facilitate and augment human activities. This paper introduces artificial agent technologies as a means by which the behavioural complexity of virtual worlds can b...

Multidisciplinary Design in Virtual Worlds

Large design projects, such as those in the AEC domain, involve collaboration among a number of design disciplines, often in separate locations. With the increase in CAD usage in design offices, there has been an increase in the interest in collaboration using the electronic medium, both synchronously and asynchronously. The use of a single shared database representing a single model of a build...

Virtual Machines for Virtual Worlds

Multi User Virtual Worlds provide a simulated immersive 3D environment that is similar to the real world. Popular examples include Second Life and OpenSim. The multi-user nature of these simulations means that there are significant computational demands on the processes that render the different avatar-centric views of the world for each participant, which change with every movement or interact...

Design Agents in 3D Virtual Worlds

Design agents are rational agents that monitor and modify elements of a designed environment. Special characteristics of design agents include the ability to reason about patterns and concepts, and the ability to act autonomously in modifying or changing the design to achieve their own goals. 3D Virtual Worlds are multi-user distributed systems that provide a designed environment and a closed w...

Design principles of educational virtual worlds for preschool children